Reader Comments (24)

Well, their logo does describe them as "Environmental Knowledge for Change." So perhaps it makes sense for them to change (disappear) their past predictions. [After they've been disproved, naturally.]

Seriously, how many dire predictions not coming to pass, does it take to consider the catastrophic part of CAGW falsified? "Oh, it's definitely going to be catastrophic, we just have to wait a little longer..." Sheesh...

Wouldn't you have thought that these nutters at the UN would have learned from the likes of Paul Ehrlich, viz.never make a doomsday prediction that's due to come to pass before you're dead - it's a basic law of climate prediction.

The report is threadbare, banal guff, how it was ever allowed to see the light of day should be the talking point.The risible projections and figures are unworthy of a college student's dissertation.

Mind you, anything born out of the UN - needs to be taken with a very large dose of salt.The stench of AGW hyperbole and overkill rises from this execrable piece, anyone even remotely associated with this concoction, definitely should hang their heads in shame. Not even those famous fantasists in Tinsel town could come up with such blatant shock-horror shlock.

Wtf was that !!! a email to tell me I had a respos but it was 2 pages of gambling sites and porn and you were at the bottom could not find where else to put this , bye the bye bought and read the book now i have to get it back from my dad.

The Hurricane map for Australia was wrong. It should have covered the entire Northern parts including Darwin and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

It also misses out the the large inland range of the Hurricanes which bring much needed water to inland desert and coastal agriculture on the West coast. In fact some Hurricane remnants make it all the way to the South East of Australia bringing welcome rains through much of Central Australia

Ref - DougS Apr 16, 2011 at 5:20 PM"Wouldn't you have thought that these nutters at the UN would have learned from the likes of Paul Ehrlich, viz. never make a doomsday prediction that's due to come to pass before you're dead - it's a basic law of climate prediction. It should be tattooed on their foreheads!"

Doug, they do seem to be making a lot of money with their current modis operandi, hummmmm... maybe the UN is immune to right reason and common sense... now how do we cure that delema? ;-)

"Seriously, how many dire predictions not coming to pass, does it take to consider the catastrophic part of CAGW falsified?"

It only takes one to happen. You should look at these predictions as threats rather than sure things. For example I treat the prediction of an ice free north pole by 2013 as a plausible worst case scenario that hopefully won't happen. But it's not the only prediction out there (there are some for the 2020s, some for 2050, etc). As I say, it only takes one to be right even if 90% of them are wrong.

Why was the map there in the first place? And why was all the contemporaneous reporting, including quotes from UN spokespeople, so consistent in including "sea-level rise" among the causes of the refugees?

Because it's relevant to the contents of the PDF on the same page. The PDF only mentions 2010 in passing. In the PDF the predicted 50 million refugees by 2010 are not contributed to by sea level rise. Sea level rise is a future cause.

Cthulhu: "You should look at these predictions as threats rather than sure things."Um, no, they're predictions. And they're intended to focus effort (cost) on mitigating their effects. Many which I have seen are based on little more than WAGs (with the emphasis on the W), as this one would seem to have been.

So I repeat, what would it take to consider catastrophic AGW to be falsifiable? It would seem that you maintain that it is not epistemologically possible to falsify catastrophe prediction, because it's always possible to imagine a new danger, or to reissue a failed prediction with a later date. Is that a correct interpretation of your position?

Because it's relevant to the contents of the PDF on the same page. The PDF only mentions 2010 in passing. In the PDF the predicted 50 million refugees by 2010 are not contributed to by sea level rise. Sea level rise is a future cause.

Who cares about the PDF? The map was at the top of a web post entitled "Fifty Million Climate Refugees by 2010" by an organization joined at the hip with the UN . The contemporaneous accounts all mention refugees and sea-level rise in the same breath, again by UN people and their media enablers..

If you want to complain about a "mistake", I think you've got plenty of places to look other than WUWT.

I do not believe there have been 50 milliion "climate" refugees. It was just another easily produced and easily swallowed (by the gullible) piece of AGW scaremongering propaganda.

HOWEVER, referring to census data (unless that also includes in and out migration) is not a killer refutation of the claim. It is quite possible for populations to grow AND ALSO that there be "climate" refugees from the same country. This could be the case for countries with very high birth rates.